Know: ‘timing is everything.’

partment projects.

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Management must never relax its vigilance. Business is a 
race without a finishing line. Andrew Grove, former CEO of 
Intel, postulated Grove’s Law, “Only the paranoid survive.” But
the Japanese see management’s task more positively and call 
it kaizen: “Improving everything all the time by everyone.”
They would rather improve their business every day than pray for
an occasional breakthrough. The company that stops getting bet-
ter gets worse.
At the same time, improving the efficiency of the current opera-
tions is not enough. Defining good management in this way has
caused many businesses to fold. Management puts the company at
risk by staying indoors and not wandering out. In viewing the busi-
ness from inside out rather than from outside in, they miss changes in
customers, competitors, and channels. They miss threats and oppor-
tunities. John Le Carré observed: “A desk is a dangerous place